A photograph offers us a glimpse into the abyss of time. John Updike More Quotes by John Updike More Quotes From John Updike Journalism has not only its social stimulations but its aesthetic virtues. An invitation into print, from however suspect a source, is an opportunity to make something beautiful, to discover within oneself a treasure that would otherwise have remained buried. John Updike treasure opportunity beautiful American art in general... takes to surreal exaggerations and metaphors; but its Puritan work ethic has little use for the playful self-indulgence behind Parisian Surrealism. John Updike work-ethic self art All blessings are mixed blessings. John Updike blessing How can the planet keep turning and turning and not get so bored it explodes? John Updike so-bored planets bored You know how it is with fathers, you never escape the idea that maybe after all they're right. John Updike wisdom father ideas Cities aren't like people; they live on and on, even though their reason for being where they are has gone downriver and out to sea. John Updike cities sea people Families, doing everything for each other out of imagined obligation and always getting in each other's way, what a tangle. John Updike obligation family way To be President of the United States, sir, is to act as advocate for a blind, venomous, and ungrateful client. John Updike ungrateful president america I would rather be seated between any two women than any two men at a dinner party. John Updike party men two God is in the tiger as well as in the lamb. John Updike lambs wells god Each morning my characters greet me with misty faces willing, though chilled, to muster for another day's progress through the dazzling quicksand the marsh of blank paper. John Updike fog morning character Laws aren't ghosts in this country, they walk around with the smell of earth on them. John Updike smell law country You have a life and there are these volumes on either side that go unvisited; some day soon as the world winds he will lie beneath what he now stands on, dead as those insects whose sound he no longer hears, and the grass will go on growing, wild and blind. John Updike sides wind lying Atrocity is truly emperor; All things that thrive are slaves of cruel Creation. John Updike atrocities slave creation How sad, how strange, we make companions out of air and hurt them, so they will defy us, completing creation. John Updike strange hurt air In fact we do not try to picture the afterlife, nor is it our selves in our nervous tics and optical flecks that we wish to perpetuate; it is the self as the window on the world that we can't bear to thinkof shutting. My mind when I was a boy of ten or eleven sent up its silent scream at the thought of future aeons -- at the thought of the cosmic party going on without me. The yearning for an afterlife is the opposite of selfish: it is love and praise of the world that we are privileged, in this complex interval of light, to witness and experience. John Updike selfish party boys At last, small witches, goblins, hags, And pirates armed with paper bags Their costumes hinged on safety pins, Go haunt a night of pumpkin grins. John Updike safety-pins pirate night Sex ages us. Priests are boyish, spinsters stay black-haired until after fifty. We others, the demon rots us out. John Updike black age sex There's a crystallization that goes on in a poem which the young man can bring off, but which the middle-aged man can't. John Updike middle goes-on men There are some women that don't do it for some men. That's why they turn out so many models. John Updike turns women men
